Getting tough on crime necessarily means being tough on criminals. The public requires that serious criminals serve time in prison in hopes they’ll rethink their lawbreaking ways and ultimately re-enter society dedicated to the straight and narrow path.

But because society also makes it exceedingly difficult for ex-offenders to reintegrate, the system breaks down. The difficulties of finding jobs, housing, health care and family support often lead ex-offenders to return to crime and, all too often, prison.

Bishop T.D. Jakes of Potter’s House is dedicated to reversing that cycle. On Sunday, he conducted a graduation ceremony for 91 men and women — part of a group of 119 ex-offenders — who completed a 12-month rehabilitation program designed to help them stay away from the temptations and bad influences that lead back to prison.

“I’m concerned that we spend more to incarcerate than we do to rehabilitate,” Jakes said. The graduation ceremony was for the Texas Offenders Re-entry Initiative, a nonprofit program Jakes founded and expanded to Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Austin and Houston to help former inmates cope with the challenges outside prison walls.

More than 10,000 ex-offenders have been through the program. The initiative claims a number of successes, such as reducing the rate of relapse from substance and alcohol abuse by 50 percent and placing 63 percent of graduates in jobs. The program claims to have reduced participants’ recidivism rates by 9 percent since 2005.

There’s still a long way to go. One of the biggest challenges is overcoming the sense of hopelessness that men and women often confront after leaving prison when they are shunned by landlords and encounter distrust and skepticism among would-be employers. A combination of factors makes it hard to reintegrate and build a productive lifestyle.

Data isn’t available on where ex-offenders live, but it’s logical that they would be drawn to where rents are cheap and the community seems less hostile to those making the transition from prison. Several areas in southern Dallas with a far higher concentration of poverty and low educational achievement are widely perceived as magnets for ex-offenders and gangs.

Those ingredients help create the unhealthy cycle that makes it easier for ex-offenders to fall back into old habits and establish links with those who see crime as the fastest way out of poverty.

It’s a bad environment for those trying to stay on the straight and narrow. It’s bad for neighborhoods trying to rid themselves of negative influences, and it’s certainly bad for children looking for adult role models to follow.

That’s why Jakes and the other Dallas leaders at Sunday’s ceremony deserve plaudits for taking the initiative to reverse the cycle and encourage those trying to turn their lives around.

By the numbers

10,000: Number helped statewide by the Texas Offenders Re-entry Initiative

63: Percent of TORI graduates successfully placed in jobs

50: Percent decline in the rate of participants’ relapse into alcohol and drug abuse